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Event Detail

Thursday, March 6, 2014

Courts, Judges and Politics

2. March 6, 2013 - The Rights of Gays, Lesbians, Bisexuals and
Transsexuals Faculty Dining Room The guest speaker will be Judge
Wolf's former law clerk, Roberta Kaplan, Harvard '88, who recently
successfully argued in the Supreme Court that the Defense of
Marriage Act ("DOMA") is unconstitutional. In addition to
discussion of the role of the courts concerning same-sex marriage,
the session will draw on Judge Wolf's decisions finding that: the
private organizers of Boston's St. Patrick's Day Parade had a First
Amendment right to exclude a gay, lesbian, and bisexual group;
religiously motivated parents did not have the right to exempt
their children in elementary school from education about
homosexuality and same-sex marriage; and ordering the Massachusetts
Department of Corrections to provide sex reassignment surgery to a
transsexual prisoner.